boozywoozy

i don’t partake of alcohol.

some have told me that this is a bad thing, while others seem shocked that i am tea-total.

i just don’t drink.

so there i was new year’s eve on the tube. unsurprisingly it was quite a busy night as people made their way to parties, clubs or to the fireworks. lots of people dressed to the nines, looking to impress. pretty much every one of them clutching an already half empty bottle in one hand and a blue plastic bag with full bottles and cans in the other.

lots of drinking.

lots of loud voices.

some shouting and screaming.

over on one set of seats one girl was telling two younger girls not to pretend to be older than they were and they should just enjoy themselves for themselves. sage words. the speaker was probably in her early 20s.

standing by the doors a mixed group of twenty somethings the blokes doing all the talking the girls just listening, looking stunning but also bored. all of them sucking down a drink, slight slurring occurring, didn’t because as the girls had realised the blokes were just talking bollocks.

on the station platform around the seats a growing number of empty and half-empty bottles and plastic cups.

outside the station people walking and drinking.

more empties on walls, windows and flowerbeds.

i get that we have made the new year some big event even though the difference between yesterday and today are pretty much non-existent. it isn’t the partying or the celebrating i have a problem with. it isn’t the noise, the hoo-hah, the false bonhomie that makes me stop and think.

it is the simple fact that so many people have to get so bladdered to enjoy themselves.

they are determined to get shitfaced.

it is the night to get royally fucked up, as opposed to the regular weekly session of getting just very pissed.

talk about pissing it all away.

the expense is one thing, what i really don’t understand is why would you get so drunk in order to enjoy yourself that you have no real memory of it beyond the raging hangover and the empty wallet. the first week or so of january will be taken up with people saying how wrecked they were over christmas and new year and how they don’t remember a thing of it.

it seems pointless to me.

yet somehow it does seem like a perfect metaphor for current society.